


Special Treatment

by enmity



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:27:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25121626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: Were it a mission she would’ve had to put that on her report, that a feint so transparent could fool her so thoroughly.
Relationships: Axel/Xion, Riku/Xion
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Special Treatment

Everything was familiar, and it hurt. The off-gray walls and listless footsteps and the sky that remained pitch-dark no matter what time of day she might find herself tipping her head out the window to peer at the nameless city glowing far below, standing distantly yet unmistakably at the bottom of an unfathomable plunge. Even her room, which surprisingly had yet to be walled in or somehow demolished, remained as impersonal and barren as it had been when she’d left, as though welcoming her inevitable return to Never Was, if not having anticipated it altogether.

She didn’t think of that part, or at least tried not to. Some days it was easy. There was a trick to the Organization: it gave you permission not to think.

So some days it was easy. Easier, anyway. Familiar.

The paper crinkled. The pressure of her fingers balling into a shaky fist were all that was holding the tattered scraps of her report together. Xion stared at it, then the door, and blinked twice before pushing herself inside. 

She was back. Back, which meant the Castle and hard mattresses and sheets too thin to be comfortable. Back to white ceilings and bland meals and empty chitchat and dreams of water and white noise pressing over her ears, her head burning with an urge to scream, and _Roxas, do you know what it’s like to drown?_

He didn’t. Had shaken his head and looked at her, a little helplessly, a little like she’d grown another head. His ice continued to drip. It was a look she knew well. “I’m sorry,” she’d murmured, turning her eyes to the sunset, the row of houses. At the bottom of the drop was a group of schoolchildren playing catch. Running circles around each other. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

They’d put her back on duty. Recon, Heartless extermination, almost as though nothing had happened, but she’d noticed her pick of missions had shrunk to barely a handful a day. The Organization’s leash had grown slack, but shorter at the same time; she spent more time in the Castle than ever now, waking later and turning in earlier, and she might find herself grateful for the lesser workload, were it not for her reports coming back methodically crossed out and torn up—over and over and over again.

_“Did you need something?”_

“Sorry,” she’d told Axel, almost sheepishly, and didn’t look him in the eyes. Instead she squinted down at the jumble of letters her ersatz report made. The ink rubbed black on black when her gloved hand squeezed too hard—it wouldn’t stain. “Can you tell Roxas I can’t make it today? I need to rewrite this in time for the deadline…”

“Go tell him yourself,” he’d said, and already his back halfway faced her. Whatever expression he was making was lost to her, and suddenly it was so easy to remember that all she knew of him consisted of things he was willing to freely offer. And sometimes he wasn’t willing. “He’s not talking to me right now.”

“I- I see.”

“And whose fault is that?” He’d stood five steps away, one hand gripping the staircase railing. The other twitched at his side in a gesture she recognized. As though caught between summoning a black hole or something sharp and molten and deadly. “Will that be all? I got somewhere to be.”

And it was when he’d turned to walk away and she could even out her breaths again that she’d realized she’d been unconsciously bracing herself.

 _For what?_ Xion thought. Even in her own mind her voice shook. She sucked air into her stomach. Her hand plucked out a sheet of paper from the pile on her desk, crisp and new, as the other put the pen to work.

She didn’t know what she’d been so scared of. Axel had hit her once already, and it hadn’t hurt. Not really, and besides he must’ve been holding back anyway. It had been so long ago, and she was already forgetting the sting.

He hadn’t meant to injure her. Not seriously. She’d been distracted and Roxas had yelled out her name and if Axel had wanted he could’ve closed their distance effortlessly, incinerating heat aimed at her vitals, and his weapon was right there in easy reach but he hadn’t called it back, just sideswiped her and he was _fast_ , fastest runner in the Organization and she couldn’t step in time to avoid the backhand—were it a mission she would’ve had to put that on her report, that a feint so transparent could fool her so thoroughly. Only had herself to blame, really.

And if she were to say that Axel had hurt her—and friends didn’t do that to each other—what did that make her?

Her. A replica. Less than a Nobody, an imitation of an imitation, built to copy and duplicate, to take and take and take because she stole everything of Roxas that wasn’t borrowed, and she knew it.

Axel knew it too, and maybe it was out of kindness that he still bothered to acknowledge her when she spoke, even if it was to berate her for not being built with common sense. And maybe it was true. It was madness to think she could continue playing at this charade of normalcy.

The Organization gave her permission not to think, but it demanded her free will in exchange. And the choice Riku had given her hadn’t really been a choice at all. Not when he could overpower her so easily, when his blade was quick and sharp and it wouldn’t have taken much at all, to hurry her along the path he had paved. Not when it was never her who he wanted to save.

But he’d given her one anyway, and for that she was thankful. He’d given her his time, and his patience. That was his way of telling her he wanted to avoid coming to blows—that a voluntary surrender would be far less messy, far less cruel, and for that Riku was willing to wait. It was a flattering notion to entertain, that even a puppet who took his friend away deserved the courtesy.

She liked to think that Axel thought the same of her.

Xion put the pen down. Her report was done, freshly rewritten. She would turn it in and go to bed, and tomorrow would be another day—a new day. She would see Roxas and talk to him and have ice cream with him again, and in time he would understand, would ease the anger tensing up his shoulders whenever he looked at Axel. “It wasn’t his fault,” she’d said, and it had been the truth. “I wouldn’t be here with you right now if he hadn’t brought me back.”

She glanced outside her window. It would be nice to keep pretending for a little longer, she thought. Her future might have been written for her, but there was still time before she’d reach the ending; selfish as it may be, she intended to make the most of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "axel being a shitty friend and throwing xion under a bus for roxas" 
> 
> But let's be real I jumped at the chance to make Saix tear up Xion's reports, haha ^_^


End file.
